Day 12

I hope no one takes any offense to this, but tonight I ate the best piece of chicken I've had in a really long time. It was fantastic! There is a little restaurant a couple blocks away from where we are staying and I think we've already eaten there 5 times. It is called Fritanga Margarita. I've always ordered the beef at night because it is pretty good and a little cheaper than the chicken, but after tonight I know why it is a bit more. It was a huge chicken breast cooked over the grill shown here. Interestingly enough, they just put the grill out on the street every night and that is where they cook. The chicken was cooked perfectly and had a mild but really good flavor. We had that will gallo pinto (rice and beans) and a grape soda. What more could you ask for?

There aren't many entertainment options here in Chinandega so we wandered around to get to know the area better on our day off. Part of our assignment is to come up with a "business in a box" idea. Essentially a small business that would be easily replicated in other places and would be profitable. I racked my brain all day and haven't really come up with much yet. Hopefully the inspiration will come. One of the reasons we wanted to wander around was to see if we could find anything that might work. If something businesswise works, there are a lot of other people doing it too, there is a lot of replication and a lack of creativity. While we were walking around I bought a bag of freshly cut mangoes for a quarter. These things are phenomenal as well. It was a pretty crowded marketplace and there are quite a few beggars there. "Los cheles" (gringos) are definitely a target so everyone that stuck out their hand asking for money got a mango wedge. I hope they actually ate and enjoyed them because they were good.

We were going to go check out some ruins of one of the first European settlements in Nicaragua but it started raining pretty hard so we couldn't go. It was probably for the best because tonight when we asked around, the people said they weren't all that great. This picture is supposed to show how hard it was raining, but I don't think it does.